an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
The points that the figures refer to US Witnesses and those born into the Org are well taken. Certainly they would tend to be higher, as noted by the posters.
Besty, nice link and point. Warlock needs to get a grip.
Still, I think these figures are significant, for sure.
S4
an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
Warlock, you ought to look into how studies like this are done. They actually used a huge cross section compared to some polls. Polling is actually a science, and the results can be remarkably accurate.
If you use the figure that for every three Witnesses, two leave, then that indicates there could be as many as 12,000,000 inactive and ex-JWs. I would have guessed that there were at least as many ex-JWs as active ones,or around 6,000,000 or so. This poll indicates that I was way underestimating.
S4
an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
Lots of threads on this article. Good!
I haven't been to my old Hall for years. My ex-wife attends, and there are lots of people there I don't know. Almost none are new members from the field. There are a lot of move ins and a few kids getting baptized.
Not much else.
S4
an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
The "fastest growing religion" comment about JWs has always puzzled me, especially over the last 20 years or so, and until the 2007 report, Witness growth was at a trickle since the mid-1990s.
I too have felt that there would be negative growth by now, but perhaps have underestimated the effect of the growing immigrant populations. I know for a fact that for decades here in the US, it was the need to learn English that many immigrants began to study. Many of these dropped the studies, but obviously many also became members.
But I think that figure, that two-thirds of the people who said they were once JWs now are no longer members, is a huge, and for the first time, accurate assessment. It coincides with our own experience, I think.
This is an important article, and worth getting spread around as much as possible. It portends sad things about the future of the Witnesses.
S4
an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080225/us_time/americasunfaithfulfaithful
That's the link. Maybe someone can activate it for me. Firefox on a Mac....
Also, saw too late that there are a couple of other threads on this out there. Didn't mean to jump in on you!
S4
an article just out this afternoon said the following.
note especially the second paragraph about jws: .
for some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going.
an article just out this afternoon said the following. Note especially the second paragraph about JWs:
For some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going. Simply counting Catholics since 1972,for example, you would get the impression that its population had remained fairly static - at about 25% of adult Americans (the current number is 23.9%). But the Pew report shows that of all those raised Catholic, a third have left the church. (That means that roughly one out of every 10 people in America is a former Catholic, and that ex-Catholics are almost as numerous as the America's second biggest religious group, Southern Baptists.) But Catholicism has made up for the losses by adding converts (2.6% of the population) and, more significantly, enjoying an influx of new immigratns, mostly Hispanic.
An even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny Jehovah's Witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds. That means that two-thirds of the people who told Pew they were raised Jehovah's Witnesses no longer are - yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts. Notes Lugo, "No wonder they have to keep on knocking on doors."
Wow, finally someone is catching on to the truth about JWs! I'll link the piece below.
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science has tried over the centuries to explain human existence, cosmology, and the nature of life.. at any given time in history, any number of theories have been postulated and the masses accepted them.
as fact because some great scientist came up with it and was able to baffle us/them with mathematical.
equations to "prove" it so.
Journey on wrote: "My original hypothesis was fairly simple: What was once accepted as scientific fact is thrown out the window at a later date when a new science emerges to wipe out the old. New light replaces old light. "
I'm not trying to be difficult, but your analogy is still off base. Let me use your example. to explain what I mean.
Science determined the make up of the chicken egg. Because of that make up, the came up with the hypothesis that eggs could be detrimental to heart health because of the cholesterol, which seemed reasonable. Over time, scientists conducted more studies and they found humans didn't react to eggs in the way they expected, so they adjusted the hypothesis. It wasn't a case of "throwing out" the "old" science and replacing it with the "new" science. The original science about what an egg is composed of remains the same. Our understanding of how humans react to that composition is being adjusted and will even more in the future, I'm sure.
Science, in order to be science, HAS to always be changing. I agree with whoever wrote that you're comparing oranges to eggs! You're trying to compare two quite different things - how scientific knowledge grows and how religion tries to cover its ass when it becomes obvious that earlier teachings and prophecy were wrong. Those are quite different things and seem to indicate a fundamental lack of understanding about what science is and how it works.
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science has tried over the centuries to explain human existence, cosmology, and the nature of life.. at any given time in history, any number of theories have been postulated and the masses accepted them.
as fact because some great scientist came up with it and was able to baffle us/them with mathematical.
equations to "prove" it so.
Again, journey on, it is the nature of science itself to weed out these lying researchers, In fact, the only way you know about them is that they have been exposed by other scientists!
The only way you could point to examples of "scientific cheaters" is if other scientists used science to prove they were cheating! Your own examples are contradicting your original hypothesis and comparison of science and WTS "new light."
I agree with freetosee's last few sentences. New scientific thought is the opposite of WTS new light.
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science has tried over the centuries to explain human existence, cosmology, and the nature of life.. at any given time in history, any number of theories have been postulated and the masses accepted them.
as fact because some great scientist came up with it and was able to baffle us/them with mathematical.
equations to "prove" it so.
Interesting references, BTS, but in both cases, it was the Bush administration, with its political agenda, that was trying to keep government scientists from reporting what the evidence was pointing to - worldwide global climate changes caused, at least in part, by some human activities. This was not the scientific orthodoxy trying to squelch "new light" about global climate change from fellow scientists, which was the original contention of this thread by journey on.
Thanks for the link to Rep. Peter Welch from Vermont. I know him, and know about these incidents.
S4
science has tried over the centuries to explain human existence, cosmology, and the nature of life.. at any given time in history, any number of theories have been postulated and the masses accepted them.
as fact because some great scientist came up with it and was able to baffle us/them with mathematical.
equations to "prove" it so.
Science is SUPPOSED to be constantly progressing in knowledge, expanding its grasp of the universe.
I think the point is exactly the opposite of what you're saying, journey on. With time, those scientists who disagreed with the current scientific orthodoxy - from Galileo to Einstein – have ALWAYS been vindicated, PROVIDED of course, that their ideas turned out to be more accurate than the ideas they were questioning.
I think your "new light" analogy is completely off the mark. It is the very nature of science to create an ever more accurate account of reality. Your comment smacks of an anti-science sentiment - yet the fact that you typed and sent it into cyberspace and all of us are reading and responding to it from around the globe in a matter of minutes, all of us using the inventions of science – is incredible evidence of the value of scientific work.
You are in an awkward position there, making fun of science while using the very fruits of science.
S4
